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Feb 13, 2008

Not Going According to Plan

Well, I took the entire week off from work and had some big plans. Neglected cleaning and household projects, potty training, looking at new houses online, organizing photos and videos, watching movies, blogging multiple times a day and generally spending time with the family. Now here it is, Wednesday, and nothing has been accomplished, all because of one irresponsible parent (and for once, I'm not referring to myself).

I'm talking about the parents who insist on taking their sick children to public places and letting them run around with reckless abandon, spreading their germs to anything and anyone they come across. I'm not a germaphobe. And I know you can't quarantine your kids every time they get a runny nose. And I know that kids will find a way to get sick anyway. But for the love of a good night's sleep, when your kid is a walking, projectile virus factory, it might be a good idea to skip the trips to the toy store, park, play date, book store, activity class, preschool and any other place children congregate. For example, Jameson had a gymnastics class last weekend, but we weren't about to take him when he had snot running down his face. Sneezing, rubbing his nose and climbing all over gym equipment would have been the ideal way to spread his cold to a dozen other kids in a matter of minutes. We LOVE the gymnastics class because it's basically a coordinated hour of wearing Jameson down to the point that he's ready to eat and go to bed as soon as he gets home. It's divine. But as much as I would love to send him to class, doing so would have been cruel and unusual punishment for all of those other parents.

In our case, the culprit was some snot nosed brat in the child play section of Barnes and Noble. Some parents thought it would be a good idea for their spawn to spread his viral fluids all over the books, tables and chairs and toy trains of the local book store. Nice. Maybe they were al-Qaida. At the very least they were morons. Either way, I hate them.

Jameson of course got sick. He really doesn't seem to mind other than having a little trouble sleeping because of the congestion and his nose and upper lip being raw from all the nose blowing. The problem is when it spread. The twins each have the cold now to varying degrees. Which means they are next to impossible to get to sleep and to keep asleep. The last several nights Julie and I have been able to muster four hours of sleep at best. This of course has worn me out enough that I got the cold which proceeded to become a sinus infection. Julie is barely hanging on to her health and simply looks exhausted.